


The Queen of Peace

by beaubashley



Series: The Empathetic Alas Lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: "and my love is no good against the fortress that it made of you", Alas is part of the sad girl club, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, but she is trying her very best, exploration of headcanons and general thematic ideas re: spirits and intentions, so how 'bout that BTS from Bioware?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubashley/pseuds/beaubashley
Summary: Deshanna had told her that you cannot bury those who died for love.The wind was calling.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan
Series: The Empathetic Alas Lavellan [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900387
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	The Queen of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, hey there. This is a companion piece to "Good Grief" and explores some of my ideas and HCs that I didn't get to touch on too much because the original intention for that story was to be as vague and insert-y as possible. 
> 
> I tried to write this so it could stand alone, but reading the first story is recommended for ease and clarity. 
> 
> Lastly, I used the word "ma'lin" which loosely translates to "my person" for Deshanna. I couldn't find a gender neutral term for grandparent that felt right, so there's that. The rest of the Elvhen can be inferred or found on Project Elvhen here on AO3.
> 
> Please enjoy :)

Alas came into the world much the same way as anyone else— with fresh lungs screaming. She was born bloodied and small, pushed eagerly into her first taste of air and light and love. Straight into the arms of her mother and the welcoming softness of her breast. Her father’s worn hands came soon after and the shushing rounds of coos and comfort eventually succeeded in lulling her wailing. 

The rest all followed suit. She grew up in the comfort of her clan, a place where love and lessons were shared in great abundance communally. Days were spent listening to her Keeper’s stories— harrowing tales of their history or myths spoken in gravitas. Alas clung to each one as if a bird in flight. 

But it was the quiet stories that her Keeper saved just for her that truly sent her spirit soaring. In the small hours where Deshanna could shed their role and be at peace in the space created by their son, their First-now-bonded-daughter, and grandchild. A warm space, a comfortable space, a nurturing space known only to them in the hours between duty and sleep. 

There was peace. There was happiness. There was love. 

Until there wasn’t. 

Her father had been killed— a trade of his wares in town had degraded into broken vases and spilt blood. Her mother turned to magic in the same vein, using her bonded’s own to track and dismember his murderers, but her fury had been too much to contain. It had morphed into something raw and split— an incessant demand for the world to right itself of this injustice. A demon took root within her mother’s wounded, raging heart and burned so brightly that there was nothing left to bury. 

“The ground is no place for those who died for love,” her Keeper had said. “They must be spread to the sky in the embrace of the wind.”

And now Alas had no graves to remember them by. No sprouting saplings to tend and admire and preserve. Just ashes to the heavens and an emptiness in her hands; A heaviness in her heart for always. 

All at once, it was her. Her and her Keeper and their tales. 

“May I have a story, _Ma’lin_?” she would ask. Her voice was quiet in the early morning hours, tears held fast to the rim of her eyes. “A story, please? _Please?_ ”

Her grandparent would hold her close, Alas’ face hidden away in the folds of their robe as they began to weave their words, hands rubbing circles into the child’s shaking shoulders as Alas muffled her sobs.

Deshanna would lull with their cadence and soothe with their wit; They would love with the hum of their voice and the shape of their lips and Alas would open herself to it. She would soak it all in like the balm her mother would always insist on when she’d scrape her knees in the woods, or like the centering caress of her father’s dry hands as he braided her hair before bed. 

Time helped some, but never enough. 

When she summoned ice for the first time it had only been in an attempt to mimic the numbness echoing inside herself. Fire followed soon after, but it didn’t burn nearly enough. There was too much fear of what could be if she gave into it and that fear made her blood run cold. Storm then, the heat of pure electricity dancing on her skin— sharp and crisp and bright with the recognition of her resentment and loneliness. She learned early of the beauty that could come from a place of innate chaos, of being able to strike with precision straight from within her heart. The raging tide of her pulse condensed and projected to the outside. 

She began her training as First soon after. 

* * *

  
  


When Alas was twelve Deshanna finally gave her “The Talk”— the one about her duties as First and eventually Keeper. The other, more embarrassing “talk” would come later that year. 

She already had a good grasp of the duties that would be expected of her. How to guide her clan, how to lead them to safety and wisdom and whatever future they could claim for themselves. To protect, serve, and teach. To hold their traditions and survival above all else. 

The preservation of the People and their heritage. Their hands held fast to the little sprigs of truth that tied them to their existence. 

“You must never follow the Wolf child, never hold their counsel. They will always lead you astray, too clever and cunning and selfish. Even in your darkest moments, I promise you _da’len_ , there could be nothing darker than heeding a wolf’s words. Even in waking… especially in dreaming. For the clan, my sweet, for the People.”

Alas had never dreamed in fear, especially not of Fen’Harel. It wasn’t until later that the true dangers of being a mage in the fade became known to her, and by that point she was already set in her ways of lucidity. Still, she heeded Deshanna’s warnings, acknowledging the validity and morals laid in all their words, but she was not dissuaded. 

It was hard to be when she could almost have her deepest wants and desires while she dreamt— the feel of the wind in her face as she held fast to a prancing halla, or the smell of her mother’s hair as she held her in a dreamy glen. After all, it was only in dreams that she could still hear her father’s laugh and how could she ever be expected to let that go?

She couldn’t, no matter how she tried. Instead, she held those hazy moments close, strung around her heart like drying herbs to a bow in her aravel. Ready to pluck them down whenever she was in need. 

For a long while the need was constant, but time lent its aid and stretched and mended the hurt and those dreams were left to dry longer and longer. 

They turned to dust, carried on the wind and spread to the sky. 

* * *

Alas was fifteen when she first killed a man and the reality of the world outside of her clan came crashing down on her again.

The wound of her parent’s passing had finally eased— breathing came easier, days moved with purpose. 

It was such a purpose that brought her into town that day. A small quest for out of season herbs to ease the labor of a soon-to-be mother in the clan. It would be Alas’ fifth time overseeing the birth of another of the People solely on her own. 

She found the duty rewarding and held it as a great privilege to be given so much trust at such a young age. It was a beautiful experience and she was already anticipating that liminal moment between the birth and the child’s first breath, taking in the pure relief and grateful exhaustion once the new babe’s cries hit the air. It was a special kind of magic. Messy, but special all the same. 

Procuring the needed items was quick work. The merchant at the stall was quite liberal with her scales and easily waved Alas’ coin away when she tried to pay for the larger portion. 

“You’ll be needing it,” the old woman said. “Expecting a long rain this year.” 

Alas nodded her thanks, taking the wrapped herbs and weaving her way back out of the market. 

As she was about to breach the eastern gate, a strong pair of hands grasped her left arm and hair, pulling her effortlessly into a back alley behind the final shop. 

Alas struggled and kicked, a shrill scream breaking past her lips before a fist sent her voice careening away from her. She coughed violently as she was sent to the ground, her knees catching her as her hands held her aching stomach. 

She couldn’t breathe, her mind completely blank in its frantic processing. 

Her assailant laughed. “You shouldn’t look so shocked, rabbit. Pretty little scrap like you was askin’ to be snatched up.”

The hunters in her clan had always said instinct would take control in these vital moments, when someone was pitted against an animal much more powerful than themselves. The fight or flight. No one had ever told her of the fear that could turn her body to stone or the adrenaline that rendered her incapable of grasping even a single thought. 

The man approached, but she couldn’t lift her eyes to meet them. All Alas could see was the grit of the dirt beneath her, the mud caking into her leggings. 

She was lifted up by her collar and thrown towards the wall, weighing nothing in comparison to the shem that had her now. 

“C’mon now,” the man prompted. “Smile for me, love.” 

Alas could only stare, taking in his greasy hair and poxed cheeks. Strong jaw, scared brow. The tears that were welling against her water line made the other details blur into an undefinable mix. 

“I said smile, ya filthy bitch.” And she didn’t even have time to register the pain before it struck full force. A blade sliced from the left corner of her mouth and up through her cheek, hot flaring pain signaling all at once. 

It woke her up. The flame inside the pit of her stomach, the one that always burned a little too low, suddenly sparked and surged and roared until it couldn’t be held inside of her any longer. 

She could hear her attacker scream until they fell, dead and smoldering, somewhere in front of her as she was finally released from the wall. Those instincts that had been deathly quiet before finally kicked into high gear. Her feet caught her as her left hand went to the gushing gash on her face— a fruitless attempt to stem the bleeding. 

Alas ran. 

She ran and she ran. Heart racing, face numb, vision spotting. 

And then she woke up. Her whole body ached, her cheek burned. Her fingers traced along the thick cloth wrapped around her chin and neck and lips. 

Deshanna was sat beside her, their old face creased with grim lines.

Over the next year Alas slowly healed. She managed to get the story out in small bursts of urgency before she couldn’t find her voice again for days afterwards. But she did, eventually, get it all out and it was never spoken of again. This was the one story she could do without. The deep scar across her cheek was stronger then her words could ever be.

Somehow, Alas had still managed to bring the herbs home with her. 

The delivery had been successful and Clan Lavellan welcomed in a new baby boy. 

Alas earned her vallaslin the following winter, stock still and determined and quiet. 

* * *

The common thread of all her lovers over the years were the stories. 

Stories of the hunt, stories of their interactions with the shems. Stories of loss and regrets, hopes and the future. 

She collected them all, like leaves on a vine, growing and shining until they faded into the back of her mind in golden hues. And when the tales ended, often so did she. Never in dislike or disinterest, but like the final chapter of any good book— the pages finally done and closed tightly, tucked back and away to make room for more. 

There was always room for more. 

It was never lonely, her and her tales. They kept her, sustained her. What was a dry spell compared to glorious battlefields left to decay? To cites and walls that managed to stay or even the ones that were found in disarray? Old temples and cracked thrones and shining rocks in the dirt that could have been jewels from an ancient crown. 

The stories were what made her heart sing and the people that brought them to her bed were excellent facilitators. 

She wondered if she would ever feel the same way for the storytellers themselves as she did for their words.

She could only hope.

* * *

Deshanna had trained her for this moment. Alas was ready to take her vows and her place as leader of the clan. It was time, especially now, with all the chaos of the world beyond their aravels it had become necessary. Someone would have to lead while Deshanna was away to retrieve any news from the Conclave and the ongoing war. Sooner rather than later, just in case it was too late. 

But then Deshanna fell ill with a fever that had already taken two of their best weavers and the Conclave was fast approaching. 

“I will go, _Ma’lin_ ,” Alas said, dipping a cloth into a bowl of water before placing it back against her grandparent’s face. “We must know what the world is planning so we can make countermeasures of our own.” 

“We cannot lose you, Alas. You must be careful.”

She gave her Keeper a smile, holding their hand tightly in both of hers. 

“I will be back before you can even miss me.”

* * *

Alas did not entirely know what to make of the slapdash put together group she now found herself unofficially in charge of. She didn’t know what to make of the fade altering gash in her hand or the gaping hole in the sky. She didn’t know what to make of the Maker or Andraste or Heralding, but she knew enough about shems to know when to keep her head down and when to keep her mouth shut.

This knowledge didn’t stop her hands from clenching into tight fists whenever she wanted nothing more than to send them all straight into a rift of her own making just to get some peace.

But over time, she found a small space for herself in Haven. She carved herself a piece of comfort with each companion she made. Her mouth slowly opened and words came more freely and her head would rise when someone would call her title. It was a clan of her own making and it sorely made her miss Deshanna and their stories. 

Luckily for her, Alas had a master storyteller on hand. Varric was always willing to indulge her, but on the rare occasion that the short wordsmith was indisposed she would seek tales out elsewhere and her favorite ones started to come from one source in particular.

Solas told stories like a waterfall. They poured from him in every gesture, every utterance, and it was as if he could not stop the stream of his dreams from carrying over the precipice of his lips and into the deep lake of her heart. Each word and pause and inflection all filled with deliberate care and Alas knew from the first syllable that this was it. 

She could never hear him enough. 

He challenged her in a way that she had not been in the complacency of her own clan and with each challenge she would rise to meet him— her back a little straighter, her eyes clearer, her head above water as she caught him off guard with words of her own. 

They would meet like this, and he would speak and she would listen and wait for the inevitable plummet when he challenged her again. 

* * *

The world was a mess and Alas was finding that she couldn’t be responsible for all of it, but damn it all if she didn’t try. She took every death, every hurt, every solitary being crying out for anyone to please just _help_ them and put them on her own shoulders because somebody had to. 

She tried not to think of her parents as she bent down to scrub the ashes, blood, and dirt out from under her nails in the pond she stood in around Redcliffe Farms. She tried not to think of them as she passed more bodies than she could count across Thedas. She tried not to think of them when the Inquisition couldn't spare the time to honor the dead properly. 

The only reason she could think of to make such an injustice acceptable were the words Deshanna had told her as a child. You cannot bury those who died for love. So, Alas imagined that each and every body left for the elements had a story of their own about a great and enduring love like her mother and father. She did this, day after day, and it kept the guilt away long enough that she could keep moving forward and not crumble under the weight of it. Each success against the twisting uncertainty she felt only cemented the idea further. She would keep her head down and her mouth shut and do the work that needed to be done because she had to be the one to do it. 

If this was going to be her path, if this was going to be her story, she was going to make it a good one. 

If not for herself, then at least for everyone else. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter as long as they all had a love to carry themselves home to.

* * *

Solas kissed her and for a gleaming, beautiful moment a burning consuming fire ignited in her chest and she understood what had driven her mother to the point of destruction. 

Solas kissed her again and for a gleaming, beautiful moment she understood what it was like to want a person rather than whatever tale they could bring her. She never wanted to put down the story they were becoming.

Solas left her and told her to harden her heart, and for a horrible, isolating moment it went quiet instead. It shoved itself down, and it shut itself up, and it did the work that needed to be done and Alas followed suit— face still marked, standing alone with her feet in the water in Crestwood. The sound of the wind filled her ears.

In the end, it wasn’t enough. 

Corypheus was dealt with and the world could start to mend, but Alas had failed somewhere along the way because when she turned around to seek out the end to the only story she wanted to hear she couldn’t find him. 

Solas was gone and she knew then that she had not heard him, not truly.

Their story had reached its end and he had taken the book away with him, never for her to open and read again.

* * *

Alas was grateful when Solas took the anchor. 

She was grateful when he kissed her goodbye. 

She was grateful when he finally shared his story with her— that she had been let in, even if it was only to be let go.

She could hear him, she could hear him, _she could hear him._

He sounded like the wind.

* * *

The anchor was gone, but the pain did not subside. She held it together long enough to tell the council within a decimal point of accuracy where they could shove their investigation. The Inquisition would remain and use the time they had to accomplish something more than petty bickering in the heart of her people’s promised home. 

Cole was there the moment she could finally break away from briefing her remaining inner circle on their foreseeable, although no longer guaranteed, future. He held her as she bit into her remaining fist, stifling the pain until she drew blood from the skin. 

“He did not know. He severed his ties to release the binding, but he did not know how deep it ran. In the blood, buried in the heart. Pumping, beating, coursing.” Cole pulled in a breath. “Anchored. Always. There in your chest. He did not _know_.”

Alas cried, she couldn’t stop. The copper that filled her mouth tasted of failure.

“Sleep.” The command was simple and she could feel it run through her, seizing up within her mind. “He will come.”

* * *

The pain did not subside in the fade. There was no moment of reprieve and it only seemed to grow worse from her increased vulnerability while dreaming. 

She was angry and the pain only made her angrier. A fire burned in her stomach, one she had not felt in years, and it was finally building into an inferno. She thought of her mother and the love she must have held for her father and how deeply it must have ran to have burned every trace of them away. She thought of her own love for a man she was only beginning to know and wondered if the same fire would consume her now if she gave into it. 

Maybe then, at least, the pain would stop. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to be the one to decide. 

But Solas was not gone, not like her father had been, he was only out of reach. As long as Alas still had a hand to extend to him she would not lose hope until the moment he refused to take it. 

For now she had to content herself with keeping her fraying composure as he observed from a distance. 

Alas would wait for as long as this curse afflicting her allowed. 

  
  


* * *

By the time Solas finally approached her she wanted to scream at him. She had never once felt this way towards him, even in their most heated of discussions, she had never felt _this_. 

She was hurting beyond comparison and only now did he finally decide to do something. As if he had all the time in the world while she sat in her own agony. How could he say he loved her and yet content himself with letting her suffer? 

Selfish, selfish, selfish, cowardly man! How dare he?!

She settled for sharpening her words into knives, knowing that they would be the most effective weapon against him. Screaming would get her nowhere, but a clever tongue cracked like a whip could penetrate deeper.

She almost caved when he finally touched her, his hands quick and assessing and welcome despite it all. Creators, she had missed him. 

But no, that was not fair. He didn’t get to come in and pick up the pieces at his own leisure and then leave her when it inconvenienced him! She was done letting her heart rule over every other inclination. The pain made her rational in a way that was overwhelming. It made her spiteful, it made her cruel. 

But Solas took all of her mean words, all of her cruelty, all of her heartache. He took them and he held them and he understood them. 

When she awoke she was left to linger alone in her own frustrations. The waking world was not as forgiving to her pain as Solas’ palms had been. 

  
  


* * *

Alas looked at herself in the mirror with muted horror.

The scissors in her hand trembled in her grip, chunks of her hair now scattered into her lap and onto the floor. 

What had she done?

Oh... Oh no. This was unfairly stupid. She had chopped it off in a fit, and now this was the result— patchy and uneven and probably irrevocably damaged.

She couldn’t get her braid to cooperate that morning and each cramp from her hand and ache from her fingers as she tried only brought her closer to aggravation. An aggravation that was bigger than just her new limitations. An aggravation that was deep and wrought with more layers than her hair. 

She couldn’t bring herself to admit that, maybe, she should ask for help. If not with her hair than maybe with some other aspect of her current situation. Maybe with the fact that she was secretly entertaining visits from the biggest known threat to her world. Maybe the fact that she was still dying because of the lingering magic from the anchor said threat had indirectly given her. Maybe because she was finding it harder and harder to deny the traitorous burning love that filled her whenever she was with him. 

Her anger wasn't purely cosmetic. The braid, at least, had been. Now it wasn’t even an option. Superficially, it was only a braid. A tiny little thing amongst the tight thick curls of her natural hair that she had done every morning and night since the last time her father had done it for her. It was a ritual more than anything at this point. A comfort. 

No chance of that now. Her inability to speak up had stolen that from her. 

She was used to keeping her head down, her mouth shut, doing the work and getting it done, that somewhere along the way she forgot that not everything had to be a part of that. She could ask for help, if not for the big world shattering parts, then at least for these little things. It would take some getting used to, but the least she could do was try.

Footsteps came soft and quick up the stairs of her chamber. Alas turned towards the sound, scissors still held incriminatingly in her hand. 

The initial look on Josephine’s face was akin to that of a person who had just stepped into a fresh pile of dung with bare feet. Ever the diplomat, she schooled her expression quickly.

“Oh, Inquisitor,” Josephine started, clearly trying to gather her thoughts and remember why in the world she had come up here in the first place. “My apologies, but you seem to have misplaced your hair.”

Alas laughed. Now was as good a time as any. “I do believe you’re right,” she said. “Would you be so kind as to help me find it?”

  
  


* * *

Alas had always known that on some level Solas was different— deeply different and not only in the “hobo apostate turned altruistic pontificator” he had fooled them all with.

But to have finally witnessed the full scope of how a spirit beckoned from the ancient dreaming was put through every trial life could throw at him only to see Solas come out of each and every tribulation with that unwavering sense of duty and righteousness. To see him persevere and hold indomitably to what was right and just and stay so very true to himself. With all the context she now had, that he had _given_ to her, it was easy to see how he could so effectively lead a rebellion numerous times over.

He was remarkable, this man. She could never hope to fully understand him, but she wanted to. This was the story she had waited for all of her life.

But what could she do to comprehend a man who created his own justice? A man who condemned himself in the name of it? Who sacrificed and grieved and gave until there was nothing left but the very principles he honored to keep him afloat? What could it mean to love a man like that? Surely, it would only destroy her. 

But destruction in the face of such love? There was but one path before her now. 

Deshanna had told her that you cannot bury those who died for love.

The wind was calling.

* * *

Cole was a near constant by her side as she carried on with her duties about Skyhold and beyond, but when he wasn’t Dorian was only a crystal away. 

Cole already knew all the things Alas could never bring herself to say, but with Dorian she couldn’t find the words. 

So they talked of everything else. Of his efforts in Tevinter, of the latest book he was reading, of Bull and never anything about the future. 

It was a relief to talk aimlessly with her best friend. To hear him prattle on about some dish he had the night before or the way the cut of his new robes really managed to highlight all of his best assets. 

He would ask after her and her mouth would go dry. She bit her tongue against telling him what was happening again between her and Solas. An old habit that she could not quit.

As much as she tried, she still kept her head down, and she still kept her mouth shut, and she did the work that needed to be done. So, she would tell him there wasn’t much to entertain on her end, but that Varric had let her know he had something good in the works and that she was looking forward to that. Maybe they could read it together and talk about all the absolutely raunchy bits after? The guilt stopped for a moment as she heard the man laugh. 

She missed him. 

She felt like a terrible friend.

  
  


* * *

Even if it was only in their dreams, finally being able to hold Solas and have him whole and wanting was too good to deny. To have him willingly take steps towards her, to seek out her embrace without that shadow of everything he had been keeping from her. He was lighter in a way, open and needy and Alas could not resist the temptation of him. 

So she gave herself full leave to enjoy their shared dreams together in the moments between her donning her mantle of Inquisitor and his of Fen’harel. In these small hours she could have him and she was his. 

She was happy.

She once again had his stories, and somehow that felt less significant than having him be the one to tell them to her.

Although, his current lecture on the finer practices of uthenera was ridiculously interesting.

“Did you ever worry you would never wake?” she asked from her perch against his chest.

Solas gave a sardonic shake of his head, the one that Alas was beginning to identify as self-deprecating at best. “It would have been better if I never had.”

“It would have been easier, yes, but not better,” she denied, leveling a trail of kisses from one of his cheekbones to the next. “Not to me.”

He scrunched his nose at the sensation. “Then you are an outlier. I am beginning to think it is a talent.” 

She laughed, resting her forehead against his, the press of their naked bodies together was beyond delicious to her senses. He was so very warm. “If all it takes to entice you is to be endearingly contrary, then I think I will be able to manage it.” 

* * *

Alas awoke slowly, blinking up at the high ceiling of her room, tracing the slope of it until suddenly her mouth filled with saliva, her stomach turning so quickly that she almost didn’t make it to the chamber pot in time. She stumbled, inelegant and heaving, and her stomach emptied itself of the little contents it held as she gagged several times for good measure. 

Okay. 

Okay, that was not ideal. 

A sticky sheen of sweat made her night clothes cling to her uncomfortably and she unceremoniously rid herself of it, throwing the bundle into a corner before trying to stand on unsteady legs. Her flesh prickled with goosebumps.

She took in a breath and then another, closing her eyes and calming her mind.

A knock came from her door before opening a crack. 

“Inquisitor?” Josephine’s call carried up the stairs. “You are needed in the war room.”

“I’ll only be a moment,” she replied, her voice coming out more of a croak than she had planned.

Alas waited a tense second until she heard the door close again. Her stomach rolled threateningly.

Another breath as she willed the nausea away, slow and controlled. In through her nose and out her mouth, again and again until her stomach settled. The feeling eventually subsided and she took a blessed moment to be grateful before getting dressed. 

Her council was already gathered around the war table, battle plans and stratagems all lined up and at the ready. The kitchen staff had supplied a small table filled to the brim with breakfast for the four of them. 

Alas listened intently as Leliana began her report and she gave a grateful nod to Cullen who handed her a plate assembled with a few pastries and slices of fruit. 

She absently grabbed up one of the apple tarts, but as she brought it to her mouth the smell of the fruit in its cheerful doughy blanket sent her stomach straight into her throat and she had to throw the sickeningly sweet treat as far away from her as possible before she threw up again. 

Alas braced herself against the table on an unsteady hand, instantly taking up the breathing practice that had worked earlier in curbing her stomach. Her eyes clenched tight as her council expressed their distress. She couldn’t spare them a thought outside of the swirling mantra she recited to herself internally. She would not throw up, she would not throw up, she would _not—_

She was almost successful. 

* * *

“How much time do we have left?” she asked, burrowing deeper into the space between Solas’ neck and shoulder. His arms tightened around her as he brushed his nose against her brow. 

“No more than a year, less probably.”

Her heart sank. She was running out of time to decide on what to do. 

Morrigan had arrived at Skyhold earlier that week, equal parts cold and helpful in confirming Alas’ suspicions. She was with child. By some marginal impossibility, she was pregnant from coupling with a dreamer in the fade while the vestiges of his magic still resided within her mana pool, interwoven and impossible to eradicate. The consequence to their selfishness had taken root within her and it would eventually be on display for all those they had deceived. 

An uncomfortable mix of shame and elation marked every passing moment. Often, she felt unreasonably alone. Even in the warm circle of Solas’ arms she couldn’t find comfort because as much as she wanted to, Alas couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Deep down she knew that would be the end of everything. 

She knew Solas well enough now to know that if she told him the truth of what was growing within her that he would cave. He was always one moment away from conceding regardless, it was only his stubborn pride that kept him going again and again and it would be that same pride that would stay his hand.

If she told him now she could put an end to all of this. The world would not fall and it would not be all her fault and she could have him and he could be hers.

But he wouldn’t be, not truly. His stories and his legends would become a pyre for his failures. His words would be too heavy to come up and out of his chest. He would not be the Solas who would challenge her and rise with her and whisper ancient secrets to her while she dreamt. 

She would gain him, but she would lose all that he was. 

When she was outside of their dreaming, her hand would run endless circles over the distended curve that had formed across her abdomen. She knew what must be done. 

The only comfort she could find was in her old habits. She would keep her head down and she would keep her mouth shut and she would do the work that needed to be done.

If she couldn’t save this world, then she would save this one child. It was selfish, it was indulgent, but at least _this_ was something she could do.

Dagna had worked beyond overtime on her behalf, but she had finally completed the warded ring that would bar Alas from being perceived in the fade.

Now all that was left was to say goodbye.

  
  


* * *

Alas paced around the rotunda, hand idly tracing a pattern against the heavy curve of her stomach as she hummed an old lullaby Deshanna would sing to her when she could not sleep as a child. 

In moments like these she ached for her clan. Alas wanted nothing more than to go to their new home in Wycome and straight into the steady arms of her grandparent, but she could not risk drawing attention to them. Nor could she chance revealing the existence of her child to any of Solas’ agents that may have embedded themselves among them. 

The uncertainty of her current predicament kept her awake most nights and time and again she would wind up before the frescos and the remaining reminders of Solas’ time spent with the Inquisition. The desk had been requisitioned elsewhere, the scaffolding long gone and books reintroduced to the library above, but his chair and couch still remained, pushed against the wall of the unfinished panel, and Alas would collapse into one or the other once her ankles and calves started to burn from the strain. 

Whether she acknowledged it or not, this pregnancy was consuming her in a way similar to that of the anchor. Her mana came in small dredges, her body lost weight almost as quickly as she gained it. She was gaunt where she had been full only a week before. She slept at every opportunity except for when it was most convenient, like in the early morning hours while the rest of the world was asleep.

Skyhold was quiet and dark despite her humming and Alas felt terribly detached from it all. She sank deeper into her thoughts and was flooded with longing for things that could never be. She imagined the hand on her stomach was Solas’, imagined his soft laughter and warm breath as he marveled at the life they had created together. She imagined Deshanna and that bright knowing twinkle in their eyes as they told them tale after tale of all those who had labored and and brought life into this world with the aid of their hands. Imagined shrieking wrinkly babes with their chubby fingers and toes so sweet and soft and rounded cheeks full of innocence. 

Alas gasped as she felt a sharp fluttering within her. Her eyes bulged as she looked down at her stomach, her hand frozen in place. It was the first quickening she had experienced and suddenly she was smiling. 

“ _Sav’halla_ , _isha’lin_ ,” she whispered as a sense of devoted wonder filled her from head to toe.

From then on the internal wiggling and kicks from her child became a reminder. She wasn’t alone.

* * *

Cole found her out in the herbalist garden where she was making an attempt to tend to the weeds, but between the bulging hindrance of her stomach and her aching joints, it was becoming more of an effort than she had initially set out to handle. 

“They are afraid, desperation blinding them to their loyalty.”

It felt like her heart fell into the pit of her stomach. “Who?”

“ _This could be it, we must be quick._ A glass pane fit to breaking. Do not hold it against them.” 

“Who Cole?” she demanded again. The spirit ducked his head as the words fell from him. Her council, _her_ _council_ , holding a meeting without her. Her hand instantly went to her stomach. 

They were not in the war room, no that would be too obvious. She found them, finally, in the Herald’s Rest and she waited with bated breath atop the stairs, having come in from the upper ramparts. 

Their voices echoed up to her— Cullen’s and then Leliana’s and then Josephine’s. Vivienne’s as well and it sent ice through her. She had not known that the Grand Enchanter had been planning to pay them a visit.

“We must act now, his spies have become more desperate as of late. It would be easy to slip the information and follow the trail—” Vivienne started.

Leliana cut her off. “It would lure him out. We know him to be a responsible man, he would respond. Any movement after would identify his location, he would be forced out into the open.”

“You would be inviting him to our doorstep. We do not have proper defenses in place and very well may never be able to match him. This is foolhardy. It is also _not our decision_ to make.”

Thank the Creators for Cullen. 

“I agree. This is an unprecedented situation. We could not factor for any of the possible outcomes,” Josephine pressed. 

She heard a chair scraping against the worn wood of the floor below as Leliana sighed. “We are running out of time. We must act, the good of us all is more dire than one—”

“Enough!” Alas said, heart stuttering and adrenaline racing. The full command of all her time as the Inquisitor backed her now. 

Here they were, all standing and talking as if her child was a commodity, as if _she_ were some _obstacle_ , as if they were...were…

At least they had the self awareness to look ashamed as she descended the stairs.

“Inquisitor, I—” Cullen tried. She cut him off with a look.

“My child will not be a bargaining chip for the fate of the world. They will not be used before they can even take air into their lungs.”

Vivienne faced her more fully. “You cannot expect us to concede so easily, darling. It is not—”

“No!” She protested, her only hand cutting through the air definitively. “You will sit there and you will respect my wishes because it is what I have asked of you. Not as my subordinates, but as my dearest friends.”

She wanted to cry. She did not want to be having this discussion. She just wanted to cry and she was almost entirely sure it wasn’t because she was hormonally compromised. 

Alas took in a shaking breath. “Please. You cannot put this kind of responsibility onto a child. I know this is not the ideal scenario. I know this is something that could change the tide, _I_ _know_ , but it should not. It should not be the end all be all. In the grand scheme, it would ultimately resolve nothing. The conflict would still persist. It is never so simple. But my wishes are. Do not use my child.”

Leliana looked to Vivienne, the two not so easily swayed as Josephine and Cullen. 

“This could save us,” Leliana said, her voice firm, but lacking the cold edge it held before. 

Alas’ chest twisted like a knife had been turned in her ribs. She looked away. 

“It could condemn us,” Josephine said in her sted and her support meant more than Alas could ever say. “Who is to say what would become of Fen’Harel’s plans if he learned of this information? There is no guarantee that it would turn in our favor.”

The two against her plan seemed more put out than anything and that was not nearly the convincing reaction she needed to trust that they would do as she needed them to.

Fine then. Shame on them for forcing it to come to this.

“I can guarantee you this.” Alas took a seat in the chair closest to her, her body finally winning out in the protest against gravity and existence in general. “If you betray me with this information the fate of us all will no longer be your concern and I will see to that myself.”

“Threats, darling? Do you think that is wise with what we know?”

“No, Madame de Fer,” Cullen interceded, arms folded across his chest. “These are promises. Do not make yourself our enemy in what could very well be our final hours.”

And that seemed to be the last word on the matter. Leliana and Vivienne appeared properly towed. They all stood in heavy silence before Vivienne straightened the hem at her waist and walked over to Alas. Her smile was kind despite their disagreement. 

“Good luck, my dear,” she said, putting a hand to Alas’ cheek. “I have trusted you this far, and it seems I have been outplayed. There are no more moves for me to try in good conscience.”

“Thank you,” Alas returned, her hand going over Vivenne’s. 

She could not stop the tears even if she wanted to.

  
  


* * *

“Blessed Andraste you look a—” Dorian gathered himself, clearing his throat. “A sight.”

Alas sighed, but a smile persisted at the corners of her lips and the cant of her eyebrows. Creators, she had missed him. “Why does it feel like what you meant to say was ‘a horrid terrible mess’?” 

“Probably because I did,” Dorian said. “Maybe I haven’t had the opportunity to see my share of the fragile pregnant sort, but I am fairly certain that there is abundant talk of glowing and a general… fatness of spirit that you, my friend, do not seem to be taking to.”

“I used up my personal allotment of glowing vibrancy with the anchor. Now stop gawking and help me up, please, my precious wonderful Magister Pavus.” She extended her hand up to him and he dutifully took it, hefting her up to standing, his other hand was warm and protective at the middle of her back as she swayed with a groan. 

“I’m alright,” Alas said before Dorian could utter all the worried questions she read in his eyes. He gave her one stiff nod, his face grim.

“Has it been like this the entire time?” he asked, guiding her towards the gazebo in the garden. 

Alas shrugged dismissively, which served as an answer enough. Her friend frowned, his mustache twitching in irritation. 

“Did you not think this would be the sort of thing that you should concern me with?” 

“And what would you have done if I had, Dorian? Drop all your necessary world saving plans for my own selfishness? I could not ask that of you.”

“You should not have had to make that decision. I...,” he sighed. “I am worried. And hurt, to be perfectly frank.”

Alas looked up at her friend, noticing the marked age lines around his eyes and cheeks. The grey that was now starting to run through his mustache and hair which was still as perfectly groomed as she remembered. 

“You are right. What can I do to make it up to you?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” he started, fixing a stray piece of her hair before resting his hands on her shoulders. “Your firstborn is the only suitable payment and I am here to collect.”

“The cruelty! And I was so looking forward to all the unendingly grimy responsibilities that would come with a baby. I suppose you’ll have to tell me all about each and every draining, wailing detail.”

He grimaced. “On second thought, perhaps my namesake would suffice, hm? How does that sound? A little Dorian around to keep you in line when I am too busy being...well, _me_.”

“You have a deal.” 

And what a lovely thought that was, a little toddling Dorian for them to coo and adore. Somehow, in this daydream the mustache stayed— miniaturized and oiled— and Alas let out a laugh. The babe within her stirred at the sound, sending a fitful succession of kicks in the vicinity of her bladder. She winced. 

Dorian panicked, his hands tightening. She exhaled, shaking her head before she reached up and guided his hand down to her stomach. A second passed before — _there—_ a tiny foot or fist pushed up against his palm. 

“ _Kaffas_!” Dorian pulled away, eyes wide with this horrified wonder. “And they just do that? All the time?”

”When it suits them, yes.”

“How barbarous.” His fingers inched closer before stopping. “I don’t suppose they’d let me try that again?”

Alas’ heart squeezed at the sight of her best friend, equal measures disgusted and fascinated, and she thought for the smallest moment that maybe, _maybe_ , she was doing the right thing. Maybe, _maybe_ , this was the right decision. That maybe, _just maybe_ , there was a future with her dearest friends and family. A future with her and Solas holding this tiny little life that would finally bring them all together. 

She knew better than to hope, but for a moment, she was filled with all the things that could be bright and beautiful. As she stood in the sun with her best friend while her child turned and kicked within her she allowed herself to hope. Like a secret that would never be told, like a prayer that would go unanswered. 

Unspoken, but there all the same.

* * *

The Inquisition’s forces were in place, all of their countermeasures and planning and scheming were finally coming to a head. All they could do now was hope that they had done enough.

On some level, there was an unspoken understanding that “enough” was unattainable. How could they ever begin to measure up to an ancient god of rebellion who had already successfully raged war against power bloated mage-gods? Sure, Corypheous had been one thing, but Solas was in a league of his own. They could only hope that Fen’Harel would sacrifice a piece too many in his single minded drive for victory that would allow them to catch him in the aftermath of his own folly. 

Alas knew that this would never be the case. She knew it because the only mistake available to them was wholly inside of her and that information would start and end with those around her now.

“Ah—!” Alas gasped, hand going low on her stomach as her knees gave. She would have collapsed if not for Cullen’s quick reflexes and proximity. Dorian was by her side a second later. The rest of her inner circle hovered on the edges with permeable unease.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, her breath coming in harsh through gritted teeth. 

Morrigan approached, her hand extended as she sent out a brush of magic into her. Alas could feel it round through her tightened stomach. 

“It has started.” Morrigan’s voice held that unaffected tone of hers and Alas clung to the normalcy of it. 

“It’s too soon,” she groaned, finally breathing as the contraction passed. “I can’t, they won’t survive if we fail.”

“We can delay for only so long, Inquisitor. T’would be prudent for us to plan for the real possibility that this may be progressing out of our hands.” 

No. Alas couldn’t even entertain the idea of letting such a thing come to pass. She could handle this, she _would_ handle this. This child, this one thing she would get right. It was all she had left.

“It will be enough, otherwise this was all for naught.” Alas straightened, searching deep for that steely resolution that had gotten her through until this point. The well of it was running dry, but she would muster enough for this. She had to. She could not lose this child.

She could read the unspoken protests in her companions. She took a moment to calm herself so she wouldn’t say something she would later regret. There was too much of it to add more to.

“I will be fine,” Alas insisted. “This child isn’t going anywhere until we are ready for them. As for all of you—” She could feel the onset of another contraction, bracing herself against Cullen’s shoulder. “You know what must be done.”

Cullen and Dorian guided her to a chair across the room which she collapsed into with all the grace of a newborn halla. Her hips and thighs burned at the swift, uncoordinated movement. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, how can we leave you by yourself in this state?” Dorian asked, crouching down to get level with her, resting a hand on her knee. “If the world falls, what then, dearheart? I cannot abandon you now.”

“And if you stay you will be doing exactly that. We cannot spare any forces that are needed if we have a hope to save our world,” Alas insisted, giving his hand a pat. “We have already given enough on my behalf.”

“But will you be able to manage this? Truly?” Cullen looked down at her, soft and patient and she almost hated him for it. They should all be furious, they should all be throwing her to the wolves. How had she earned this gracious and patient dedication from them? This loyalty? She felt like a betrayer— selfish and weak when they needed her most. 

She shook her head. “I was aiding births well before I even experienced my first blood. I can handle this alone.”

Cullen looked as if he would have rather heard anything else in the world. Dorian glowered, unconvinced.

It was Morrigan who became the voice of reason. 

“If I may,” she said. “As someone who has been in this very situation, Inquisitor, it would behoove you to have some wisdom on the subject. Do not go through this alone. You have the option of help, something I did not. Take it.”

Alas looked around the room. Looked into the worried determined faces of her closest friends. Her little clan, the one she had made for herself. The one that she could still have in hand. 

She thought of Deshanna and her stories. She thought of her mother and father. She thought of Ameridian and impossible tales. Of heartbreak and triumphs and little baby fingers tangled in dense braided hair. 

She thought of Solas, alone. She thought of herself, unable to reach for him.

“Very well.” She could concede this one thing. It would be nice to not suffer the long hours ahead by herself. “Thank you, Morrigan.”

She scanned the room again, taking time to remember every detail. 

“Thank you.” A final, blinding smile, her heart growing as tight as the cramp rolling up from her lower stomach and into her chest. “All of you.”

It was debilitating, this love, but it was hers and she was grateful.

  
  


* * *

The wind, the wind. She could hear nothing but the wind. 

But she was not ready. What could ever make her ready? Her son was asleep besides her, sweet and soft and so very new. She would never be ready. 

She should have told him. She did not want her final moments to be filled with this kind of guilt. 

“Dorian?” she asked into the crystal cradled in her hand. Her voice was soft and calm— entirely polar to the chaos that was her body and mind at the moment, but on some level she must have known that she could not afford to startle the baby. 

_“I am here_ ,” his voice cracked through. “ _The babe is terribly quiet, is everything alright_?”

“He’s beautiful, he’s alive,” she said, and then she started to cry. Thick tears that blurred the perfect vision of her child dreaming and blissful. “Dorian... you have to tell him.”

“ _I would sooner kill him if I thought it was at all possible._ ” 

“Please, you are the only one who can still get to him. I was wrong, he deserves to know.”

“ _Deserves_ _?!_ ” Dorian was angry and Alas only fell deeper into her grief. She was starting to feel numb in her legs. “ _He deserves a knife to the throat! A swift drop into the void_ _!_ ” 

Her fingers were having a hard time holding the crystal in place, it was slipping from her hand. 

She held on. “Dorian, I do not think I am going to make it.” 

“ _Alas—_ ”

“Tell him. Please.”

Her hand finally gave, the device still cradled in her palm as she looked down at her son and all his loveliness and she grieved for the future that she was going to miss. The sky was open, she could feel the fade like a blanket against her skin, her son was healthy and alive and between Morrigan and Cole she knew that he would be watched over and taken care of. 

“ _You cannot ask this of me, how could I even begin to do it?_ ” Dorian lamented, but his voice was far away and removed from her conscience. “ _Alas? Dearheart? Alas!?_ ” 

She could not find her voice to answer him. 

She wanted to stay. She wanted it so very badly. 

Her heart clenched, her breath slowed. She thought of her parents for what would be the final time and she breathed her first and last wish of love to the child she had sacrificed her world for. 

She hoped she had done enough.

* * *

Rain felt like a wet hello Empathy decided. It dotted and it splashed and it covered everything they could see. 

They raised a hand out to it, watching idly as some drops hit the expanse of her left palm and they had to push through the disquieting feeling that being able to feel the droplets there was not right. They clenched their hand into a fist, pushing it against their legs as they tilted their head back to the sky.

Why were they here? 

There must be a reason. 

None came and Empathy sighed before standing. Maybe they could find a clue somewhere else. 

So they walked, weaving between the lush green trees, idly tracing the drenched bark and savoring the dense cushioning of the dampened ground beneath them. It all reminded them of something, a tight feeling in their chest as they started to hum. 

The humming only grew, words finally breaking through and spilling from them like the rain itself. 

They heard a rustling from the trees behind them, turning at the sound and stopping their song. 

Spectral eyes scanned for the source, but found nothing. 

They turned back around only to be greeted by the sight of a boy with the most self-satisfied grin Empathy had ever seen. Granted, they had only manifested within the last couple of hours, but the thought still held. 

“You’re new!” the boy said, his grin going a bit wolffish in the corners. Empathy could almost envision perky little ears and an erratic tail based solely on the gleaming eagerness they found in his green eyes. Eyes that could match the leaves on the trees that surrounded them. Eyes that felt familiar in a way that made them stir uncomfortably.

“I am,” Empathy said, equally enthused regardless of their trepidation. 

“I’m Alerion, my _Babae_ and I live over there.” The boy extended the last word as he brought a hand up to gesture down the hill. “On the other side of the glen.”

Empathy stared blankly at where Alerion designated, probably longer than was necessary, entranced by the drips from the canopy as they hit the leaves farther and farther away.

Alerion waved his hand, smiling when they looked back to him. “I liked your song. Would you teach it to me?”

Empathy thought on it as a surging feeling of _want_ ran through them from bottom to top, but they did not rightly know the song themselves, it had only just come to them. “I am not sure”

“Please? I’ll trade you for it. I can teach you a game I learned.”

“Trade?” Empathy turned the word over, looking for any deficits. 

“Yes, _Babae_ told me that you cannot gain knowledge from others without offering something in return. But not to offer anything of myself, but from myself instead.” 

“That is sound advice.”

“So a trade then? My game for your song?” And he smiled so widely, his genuine eagerness sweeping Empathy away.

How could they resist?

“You have yourself a deal, little wolf.”

The boy was true to his word, dutifully teaching Empathy the many ways of children’s hand games and all the variations there of. It was a focused and dedicated work, but throughout their dealings Alerion was the epitome of patience, all smiles and giggles and easy instructions that Empathy couldn’t help but laugh along. 

When it was their turn to teach the boy, he went still as they started to sing. His eyes were focused, penetrative to a degree that kept Empathy from holding the gaze for long. He was quiet from beginning to end, nodding once before giving the song a try of his own. He got it in one. 

“You’re very clever,” Empathy said. 

Alerion grinned with this gentle pride that tugged at something inside the spirit. “Thank you, it is a pretty song and now I can carry it home with me.” 

At the mention of his home, Empathy marked the darkened state of the woods around them, the sun’s orange glow barely filtering in. They were fairly certain that children were not meant to be left wandering around in the dark. 

“It is getting late, I think. Won’t your _Babae_ be worried about where you are?” 

His face turned at the thought and he stood suddenly. “Ah—I should go.” Alerion dithered another moment, looking out past the trees and the hill and then back to them. He looked antsy and the feeling quickly washed through Empathy as well, prickly and warbling. 

“Goodbye then,” Alerion said with a nod and a wave before he started on his way. Empathy did the same as they watched him go. 

The boy stopped. He turned and brought his hands up to his mouth.

“I’ll be back!” he yelled. 

Empathy smiled, matching his posture and stance unconsciously. 

“I’ll be here!” 

And so they stayed.

* * *

The next day the two wolves came just as Compassion had told her they would. As the two of them approached, hand in hand, Empathy found that they were scared and they couldn’t understand why. 

No, no. Empathy was not scared. What they were personally feeling right then was an overwhelming longing pulled through them. So then where was all this fear coming from?

“You need not be worried, Wolf,” they spoke, focusing intently on the slide of their hands against Alerion’s in the pattern he had shown them before. Rhythmic and repetitive, soothing. “A rock only parts the river, it cannot stop it.”

The spike of fear settled and Empathy could breathe clearly for a moment. They were still assessing where all this yearning had come from and why it was pulling them to the old wolf even though this little one was clearly much more fun, when Cole appeared besides them. Wet and calm.

The rain was coming, they could almost taste it on the wind. 

  
  


* * *

Alerion accidentally called them _Mamae_ and it forced something to vividly awaken within the spirit. 

The desire had always been there, buried deep within Alerion’s heart and available for Empathy to detect it in varying waves over the years, but actually hearing it, having it be addressed directly to them, was overwhelming. 

It hurt. It ached and flooded Empathy with this all-consuming sense of purpose that they had never known before. Like someone screaming from within a pit up to the surface for salvation.

As much as they could sense Alerion wanting it, they found that they needed it even more.

They were grateful when Solas stepped in and allowed Empathy to get away before either of them could notice their shaking hands.

_Mamae_ should not be such a violent word.

  
  


* * *

Empathy went deep into the dreaming after Alerion went off to complete his apprenticeship and Solas continued to remain idle in his sunset years. Empathy went into the dreaming for decades immeasurable and visited all the places that had been calling to them since they had first heard the word _Mamae_. They floated through Skyhold, singing like a beacon and steeped in memories of her. Empathy followed all the threaded fragments of this woman and they were pulled across Thedas into so many little corners that they got tangled in the knotted core of Alas’ existence. They sank further into the siren call that was the Inquisitor and Empathy realized that their own melody was actually a harmony to Alas Lavellan. 

They found her standing in a shallow lake, eyes closed and head back. Aravels stood still and tall, bright splashes of red canvas against the dense wood that stretched out in all directions. The hushed sounds of a camp starting to wake came in and out around them. Alas looked out towards the treeline and Empathy froze, caught in the secular pull of her green eyes. They thought of Alerion and, belatedly, they realized that they had been hers all along. 

The vibrancy of their connection brought about a whole other spew of memories and understanding. Together they ventured away from the clan’s aravels and through all that had occurred since Alas had died. The devastation and loss of her family, friends, and world. Everything that she had given up for a child she had never had the chance to know. In the pit of that great pain they both mourned, grieved, processed, and grew. Empathy pulled them away from the hurt until it healed, both the old and the new knitting tightly together. Empathy showed Alas of their own life— of Solas, Cole, Alerion, and the new world. Grasped hands and singing to the rain, spirits and magic and peace, _finally_ , peace. Their shared connection hummed brightly throughout the progression, less paralyzing, less distraught, building and building into a blinding want.

When Empathy went to breach the surface of their consciousness, it was Alas who came back out and it was the purest easiest breath that escaped her when she woke in the grove where Solas had laid her to rest.

She looked down at both of her hands, flipping them back and forth.

Alive and real.

* * *

Alas was in Solas’ study, something she recalled she had done time and again as Empathy and yet it all felt brand new. The soft light through the open windows, the gentle smell of fresh green leaves that came in on each subtle breeze. The sound and texture of the pages that she turned between her fingers. The creak of the old bound spine of the book in her lap.

Her back began to ache from sitting still for as long as she had and it was the most beautiful feeling in the world. Her body and her mind and the tactile sensation of existence. 

She was alive. 

Solas cleared his throat at the doorway and she looked up at the sound. It was clear that he had been watching in silence for some time, her mind too absorbed in cataloging every sensation in front of her eyes and hands that she had been unaware of his approach. 

He nodded his head at her as he fully entered the room. 

He had been quiet after the initial shock of her physical manifestation from Empathy had settled. Slowly, he started to shrink away from her as he allowed all the pieces to fall into place and from then onward there was an unspoken distance between them. 

It reminded her of their early days in the Hinterlands and Haven as she tiptoed around her new companions and held her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep herself from slipping in front of these strangers that would sooner kill her than help her. Alas hated it then and she detested it now when all she wanted was for him to hold her until her body went numb from the feel of it, but she did not have the words or the endurance to suss out the exact “what” and “where” of his trepidation. Perhaps all he needed was time. Thankfully, there was now plenty of that for them to spare each other. 

Solas went to his desk and took his place at his chair, tall backed and well worn. He started on the pile of correspondence that had accumulated and she found herself watching as his eyes scanned the pages, his long fingers distracting in their graceful movements at the corner of opened envelopes or tearing through wax seals. 

As if sensing her attention, he spared her a glance before his eyes went back to his task. That was the most she would probably get out of him. A glance or a nod. Sometimes a question to continue their further cohabitation, “ _Are you hungry_?”, “ _Are you cold_?” and the like. 

“What are you reading?” he asked, eyes resolute on the words before him.

Alas glanced down at the book in her lap, a hot flash of embarrassment creeping up her neck. “I, uhm...I’m not actually sure.” She closed it, glancing at the cover. She looked back to him, eyes tracing the curve of his neck down into his shoulders. “It was more the feel of the act I was after rather than the contents.” 

He hummed noncommittally as he scribbled down some note or other. “I see,” he said after a moment.

Had things always been this awkward between them? So forced? The stilted silence that hung in the air was oppressive. Space and time, she reminded herself. She could give him that. What else was there to do?

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” Alas said, standing and stuffing the book back into its rightful spot.

That, apparently, caught his attention. “No, stay. I will go.” He stood, gesturing down to the letters. “These can wait. Please, enjoy your book.”

“It’s alright,” she held her hands out placatingly, shaking her head. “I need some air.”

They stood awkwardly in the resulting quiet, both looking anywhere but at each other. There was a cobweb in the corner beyond Solas’ head that was incredibly interesting.

“I could join you,” Solas started, his words a question without asking it. “If you would find that amenable.”

Her fingers folded together in front of her. “I would like that.”

The outside air did little to relieve the divide between them. Stiff shoulders and measured steps. Hands purposefully held back and away.

“Are you cold?” Solas asked, predictably. 

“No,” Alas said, trying her best to reassure him with a shake of her head.

The sun filtered through the trees overhead as they continued deeper into the grove, the swaying bows of green and yellow light served as distraction enough for a time. 

The rhythmic pattern of their strides began to unintentionally synchronize and the stiffness in their hands and shoulders ebbed away with each step. Their feet carried them over the hills and dips of the valley in the glen, the flowers and lushness that came with the sharp scent of spring a balm to their trepidation. 

Solas pulled himself over a large gnarled root that was half her own size before he held out a hand to her. She stared at it like it was some great mystery. Any ease they had gained passed in a blink as Solas looked down into his own palm like it had betrayed him, but she took it up before he could change his mind. He pulled her up and over as she climbed towards him. Alas smiled as she stood fully. Their eyes met and a sweet warmth spread from the fingers still held in her hands and into her cheeks. He stared back, a little lost, a little scared, but there regardless.

The moment eventually broke as a swooping bird’s song broke the quiet. Solas looked up towards it, his hand slipping from hers with a finality that stung. No. No more, she scrambled for his fingers and his head snapped back at the renewed contact.

“Please?” she asked, quiet and unsure and hopeful. She craved the sensation of him, longed for his touches and looks in a way that verged on unbearable. She had kept herself in check, she had wanted to give him time, but beneath all her good intentions she was filled with a steadily drumming want. She would happily take a whisper of a brush from his skin and savor it until the heat of him faded, but she refused to be devoured by his hesitation any longer.

Thankfully, Solas acquiesced, a small nod as they continued on their walk.

She released a breath she had not known she was holding, her lungs searing from the length of it. It felt like a gift, the way everything softened from the knowledge that Solas was there, that she had him even if it was only in this small physical way. The sensation, the slip of his calloused hands against her own fingers. His mana humming just beneath his skin besides hers, ebbing with their pulse.

An intimacy she only wanted to share with him. Like she had a lifetime ago. She loved him. After all this time, she loved him and it would never be something she could reign in again now that she came flush with the reality of it. 

They came towards the river that marked the edge of the land that belonged to Solas and the rest of the wood. A routine that was long overdue. Alas gave into the desire to feel the cool stream against her skin, walking straight in until the hold on Solas’ hand was the only thing stopping her from going any farther. He stood, immovable, at the edge. 

He watched her, fond as anything, as he slipped his fingers through each of hers before letting go. Her heart stuttered at the sight of him, clear and real in the sunlight, the cold water adding to the clarity of the moment and grounding her to the present.

“At times, I wonder if you are merely an illusion I have willed into existence, another spirit I have coaxed into compliance at my side,” Solas said. “Then you turn your head with this exacting tilt or speak in such a way that I am forced to acknowledge that you are more than a slip of a memory for me to reconcile. For example, right now. You and water. You would do exactly this if you spotted a river or lake or pond on our excursions. As if you had forgotten what it was like to feel something other than the unforgiving ground we were forced to travel with the Inquisition.” 

Flashes of their time spent together ran through her. The camp near Redcliffe Farms, the Dalish in the Exalted Plains, wyverns in Ghilan'nain's Grove, the oasis around Solasan, and markers in the Emerald Graves. Even the Storm Coast with her hands lifted and singing to the rain.

“I didn’t forget,” Alas said. “I was remembering all the times I had done it before, and I was giving thanks for being able to do it again. As I am now. As I will again. I may have changed, but the water is always the same.”

“It is strange, then, that with your affinity for all things wet that you did not partake of the Well. I think, at the time, a part of me expected you to and I realize now that it was because I had never seen you near water and not in some part within it.”

She laughed. “If anything, it was my complete lack of desire to do so that warned me of the danger. I remembered myself, Solas, and I knew I wouldn’t want to in such a way. If I had let the water take me then I would not be Alas Lavellan in all the ways that I had previously been with my feet steady in the shore of my life. I would be someone else, looking out and remembering for me.”

“And now?” He asked, voice quiet and face withdrawn.

“Now I am here and I am thankful.” She took a step closer to him, noting each spec of grit and stone that slipped beneath her heel as she did. “Don’t you see? This water feels just the same and it always will. There will always be the water, and the air, and the trees, Solas. In every moment there is the same ground beneath your feet, but there’s more, isn't there? There was more to me every time I entered the water just as there was more to my world than the end of yours.”

She took up his hand again, damp feet slick against the loose dry earth. “All that’s left to do now is remember and to be thankful that we were given the chance to do so again.” 

“Is that all?” he said, face softening. Relief rushed through her.

She brought his knuckles to her lips, keenly aware of his stuttered breathing as she did so, and kissed her way to the tips of his fingers. 

“It’s a start.”

  
  


* * *

Alas was out in the garden she was starting to plant at Solas’ insistence. A hobby he said, like it had been at Skyhold. A distraction was what he meant. A way to get her hands to focus on something else besides the twitching desire to latch onto him whenever they stood too close. 

It was good work, regardless of the motivations. Her palms against the cool earth and her knees caked in mud. She took in a breath, aromatic and energizing, as she tried to scrape the dirt from her nails. She startled when a hand came to rest on her shoulder. 

She looked up to find Cole taking in the blooms all around them, standing nearly as tall as he did. 

“Cole,” she greeted. His pale blue eyes focused as his hand slipped from its perch. 

“Welcome back.” He took a step back as Alas stood. “A space left unspoken, stones skipped on the water until it sinks. Heavy and real.”

“Thank you,” Alas smiled, ducking down to catch his eyes with her own. “For taking care of me.”

The spirit tensed for a moment as he was pulled into a tight hug, a pulse thrumming between them until he relaxed and returned the embrace. 

“You have been missed,” he said quietly against her cheek. 

She held Cole at arms length, overpowered by a feeling of belonging. 

“Stay for dinner?” she asked.

“Okay.”

Alas couldn’t remember the last time she was this happy. Their little family was nearly whole again. 

* * *

Alerion was home and her heart would not unclench as she watched him greet his father. The beat of it pounded in her ears, her left hand twitched in time at her side.

Her son was grown and she had witnessed it all behind a foggy glass pane. 

Logically, she knew she had seen every progression, growth spurt, and milestone from when he was around ten onward, a gift in and of itself, but still Alas could not shake the absent feeling that radiated from her hands and into her stomach. 

The last time she had held him as herself he had been barely born. Wrinkly and new and lovelier than anything she had ever known. 

Now he towered, his shoulders broad and proud. His face was so much like Solas’ own, especially in his chin and cheeks, but then Alerion turned his green _green_ eyes to her— sharp and filled with warmth as he too took her in that it was enough to make her cry.

Her son was grown and she had missed it.

Alerion approached, his gaze curious and assessing. 

“You’re new,” he said. Something that had remained broken and buried deep in her chest finally snapped together, her spine tingled as she straightened. She wiped uselessly at her cheeks.

“Am I?” she asked. 

He laughed. “Perhaps not, but it is good to finally meet _you_. To be honest, from the way _Babae_ kept going on and on about it in his letters I was really expecting something else. A haunting creature with two heads or fifteen shrieking mouths and a thousand twisted fingers, but here you are, devastatingly ordinary.”

“Alerion,” Solas said, interjecting himself, his features strained. He held out his hand for his son’s pack. “Shall we go inside?”

Alerion handed it over with this small embarrassed smile that tugged at Alas’ heart. She could not stop watching him as they headed towards their home. 

“Go freshen up, _da’sa_ ,” Solas said once they made it inside. “Then we can eat.”

“Thank you, _Babae_.” Alerion moved through the house as if he had never left it. Alas took his instant comfort in their shared space as a good sign. 

The afternoon wound into the evening and then into the balmy night where they ended up outside together. The sat and shared a cool pitcher of refreshment between the three of them, the drink loosening and lulling them into deeper comfort.

It was easy, the ebb and flow between their bodies and words. A routine that had always been, but never quite like this. Empathy had given this to her and now Alas felt like a thief as the joy of her actuality overwhelmed the moment. An intruder into a life she had only seen through the eyes of someone else.

Alas’ chest warmed at the sound of Solas’ laughter and she knew it wasn’t simply from the drink. She watched the way his face lifted, the creases that formed in the corners of his eyes and mouth. The way she could find the same creases mirrored in the face of their son.

“Okay, okay. I have to ask,” Alerion said, placing his glass on the low table before him, leaning back into his chair as he leveled them both with a look. “Are you...are you really her? Or is Empathy just somewhere in there? Buried under everything else? And why now? Why not before?”

Solas seemed to sober up some, his back straightening in time with his lips. He looked to her, his eyes clear and blue and uncertain. She gave him a smile that she hoped was reassuring before turning her full attention to Alerion. 

These were the words that were important, she had to get this right. She took in a breath, grounding herself to this moment and not to all the ones she had missed.

“Living through the fade, the glimmers of me were so very _fleeting_ , Alerion. Tiny surges of myself, all scattered and voided. A puzzle with pieces constantly being produced, yet all the edges were wrong. But now—” She laughed. “ _Now_ , it is as if I can finally grasp them all in my fingers and put them together.” 

She looked back to Solas, watching how he had relaxed. Minute changes that she relished being able to identify— fingers lax and resting in his lap, head tilted fractionally towards her voice, his cheeks rosy from imbibing more than usual. Alas’ own fingers twitched with the urge to reach for him. “I can’t quite get myself to stop.”

Alerion looked back at her, bewildered as anything before he started to laugh. She snapped her attention back to him, her own green eyes mirrored back.

“I can’t believe it!” Alerion said after a moment. “I told you, _Babae_. I was right this whole time, I _knew_ it!”

“I suppose you did,” Solas conceded, sipping again to hide his smile. 

Alas took a moment, tracing through her memories as Empathy. Little flashes of joy and connection, sweet and precious and all hers.

Her wonderful clever boy. He had known his mother even before she had known herself.

  
  


* * *

The morning was glowing and warm, sunbeams caressing the tiles of the mosaics that lined the hall of Solas’ home. The home she had shared with him and with Alerion for years without knowing it. She closed her eyes and she let her fingers glide against the wall, navigating her way by a slowly recovering muscle memory. 

Solas came around the door right as she approached it and they nearly collided into each other. 

There was a tense silence as she watched the dust motes hit the light spilling between them, almost sparking like golden stars. 

“Good morning,” he said, voice achingly quiet as he looked down at her, only a breath away.

“Yes,” she responded, internally cursing her tongue.

A soft tension radiated between them. A heat that built until it simmered throughout her chest and stomach and deeper still. They stood chest to chest, toe to toe, eyes locked and longing. Solas tipped his head towards her, slow and gradual, and Alas could feel her eyes slipping shut as she rose to meet him. 

Gentle sweetness, the press of their lips in a movement she had craved since she had said goodbye to him in a dream they had shared a lifetime ago. An unwavering love surged within her, the sensation sharp and heady in her need of him.

She hummed into the embrace as he brought his hand to her neck, the blunt edge of his finger nails sending a jolt straight to her core as he traced her bottom lip with his tongue. 

Solas groaned. He let out a harsh, frustrated sound that she had never heard before as he pulled away. She felt herself go cold, frozen from the familiarity of watching him withdraw and being unable to stop it.

She could not move as he fled from the room and out of the home where they were finally starting to build something together. The moment passed and she was hit with the full awareness that if she didn’t do something, _anything_ , that he would always be out of her reach. A fire burned beneath her skin. The rage she used to be so scared of no longer held any sway over her. Here and now it had a purpose, here and now she needed to burn bright enough to engulf Solas with it.

She ran outside, catching sight of him as he broke the treeline.

“Do not walk away from me, Solas! We need to talk about this,” she called.

“I cannot! _”_ he said back, hand cutting through the air as he turned to her, too far away to reach.

She stopped, voice caught somewhere in her throat as she took him in. His eyes were intense, his back was rigid. He was terrified, Alas could read it so clearly, even down to the slightest twitch in his fingers. 

She tried again. “Solas—”

He cut her off, his voice wavering and small, like a confession. “I broke you.” 

She watched, stunned to silence, as his hands fisted at his sides. He shook his head. “And not only once. I cannot allow myself to sit in my own idleness as you put yourself directly in my path again where the only outcome for us is for you to be broken by my own hands. Not again, I cannot, _vhen’an_ , _please.”_

“Do you think of me as a punishment, then?” She ached at the thought that she had been hurting him simply by proximity. 

“Never.” The word rang with a certainty that was encouraging.

“Then what? I refuse to believe that you do not wish for more.” She knew him better than that. She had already lived a lifetime with his aborted attempts and she could not endure them again.

His voice rose, as if he could end this all with simple intimidation. “Do not tempt me.”

Alas stood straighter. Rising. “You will not push me away. I am here, in spite of everything Solas, I am still _here_. _This_ is where my fate lies. It has always been beside you, but you have pushed me away every time I find you. Don’t you think _that_ might be the source of all this?”

He looked as if he wanted to protest, but his open mouth slowly closed as he observed her. 

She dug in. “I would have followed you. But you would not trust me and now the world is giving us another chance that you would throw away. Haven’t you learned? We are allowed happiness.”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I cannot bring myself to believe that.”

“Then believe me. For once, my love, take my hand.” And it was there. Finally, in that moment, Alas held her hand out for his. Open and vulnerable. Ready and reaching. 

“I am here,” she said. 

Quicker than she could have hoped, his hand claimed hers and her heart leapt. She looked into his eyes, clear and blue and close to crying. 

“As am I. I am here.” He held her fingers fast. “You are right.” He pulled her to him, enveloping her in his arms. He was shaking. “You have always been right...apologies for taking so long to realize it.” 

The air was still and cool as they held each other. 

This was real. She had reached him. 

And now their story could continue.

* * *

They were sat beneath her tree— the tree that Solas had planted for her and tended and visited all the years she was gone. The same tree that they now used to remember Empathy and to take sanctuary under in the hot summer hours. Just her and Alerion, together and whole. Thick as thieves and picking up where he and Empathy had left off. 

“Have you two come to an agreement then?” Alerion asked, fully relaxing back against her shins as she continued to braid the dense coils of his hair.

She hummed, focusing on the weave and pattern at her fingertips— of the heavy drape of her son’s brown hair across her thighs and the visceral weight of him against her. “Of a sorts.”

“That’s vague,” he said, sitting up and wincing when the movement pulled tightly against his scalp. He let out a huff, leaning back again. “I can only imagine that _Babae_ is besides himself with what to do, and here I’ve been— away all this time with work, now please, _do_ give me something more concrete.”

Alas tugged at the strands still securely in her hands and Alerion blindly swatted at her. Oh, how she adored her sassy, nosy son. 

“We are…” Alas felt heat already rising to her cheeks. She thought of the soft way Solas had held her that morning, arms as loose as his lips against hers. Plaint and warm. She remembered his breath against the bladed edge of her ear as he whispered her name. “We are courting.”

“Courting?” Alerion repeated, going still and looking straight ahead. She stopped her braiding.

“Yes?” When did her voice become so small?

“Courting as in...romantically?” He asked again for clarity.

“Yes, yes Alerion, what other kind is there?” She pushed him off of her. “You asked for concrete. Put that schooling of yours to use and build what you can from it.”

“Truly?” He sat up fully and she watched as his braid fell swiftly off her knees and down his back.

“Stop smiling like that,” she admonished, the embarrassment creeping up to her ears. Her pulse drummed loudly in her chest. 

“I’m not!” he said, face split like a melon and teeth shining bright.

“You are!”

“Only because _you_ are!”

Alas tried to hide her face behind her hand as she looked away. He had her there. 

The world went quiet around them. Just the trees and the grass and the sun. Just her and the child she had always hoped to know.

“It’s a bit of a wonder, isn’t it?” Alerion looked up into the branches above them, gracefully bringing his braid over his shoulder and into his lap where he secured the untied ends. “Everything you two have overcome was all for this. It gives me hope.”

“Hope?” she asked. “For what?”

He smiled and she could see Solas in all his soft edges. He smiled and she knew she had made the right choice. 

“Life, I suppose. If the world can turn itself over and make itself new while still allowing the two of you to come together despite it all, well, who's to say that there aren’t opportunities like that for everyone, as long as we reach for them.”

“That is definitely a more fanciful perception of events,” Alas mused. 

He nodded in agreement. “Maybe you should tell me the way of it then, _Mamae_. From the beginning?”

“All of it?” Where would she even start?

“Please?” Alerion asked, already leaning back against her, his eyes closing as he made himself perfectly at home in the comfort of his mother’s lap. “This is a story I have been waiting to hear.”

“Well then,” she said, smiling down at him. “Just don’t forget that you asked for this.” 

She could almost feel the cold crunch of the snow in Haven, the fear and panic of a world cracked open wide and vulnerable. A guiding hand on her wrist and a love just beginning. 

She thought of Deshanna for the first time in ages and summoned what she could of their cadence and patience. She remembered the tales they had given her with the purest, simplest love. A love she could now give to her own child whenever he needed it.

Alas Lavellan never could deny a good story. Her only hope was that she could do her tale justice in the retelling.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for stopping by! Feel free to scream about DA4 with me over on tumblr @beaubashley


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